If you’re a bit on the unattractive side, you can breathe a sigh of relief this week. I looked, and people even uglier than us have been shortlisted to go to Mars and never come back. In nobly seeking a future superburb for jam-packed earthlings, and apparently in the name of better-looking ones, these homely dread-nauts decided to strand themselves on a kind of metaphorical interplanetary mountain top to be eaten by space wolves.
To be honest I’m a bit disappointed my dream to be the other Mars rover is over. Having been hit more than once with a sizeable ugly stick, I clearly meet at least half the criteria. Sheer hubris fuelled by eyes too close together and a dowager hump the size of Brocchi’s Cluster made me think I could simply squeeze past the rigorous academic testing and thence the whooshy airlock doors by dint of my repellant physiognomy. I had my backpack stocked with jerky and pinot grigio and everything. It’s not that I particularly want to cark it in a tin pod on the godforsaken Martian tundra drinking recycled wee and talking to myself. Although, you’d think the converse re. the last two with all the practice I’ve had ‘round Marital HQ when Hubster’s “gone to a wedding in the province” and accidentally takes both sets of house keys.
It’s just that I don’t usually get picked for anything. The Ultimate Trip Of A Lifetime to our adjacent bone-cold orb would’ve made a nice change. I’d get to grow tomatoes in a moist jungly biosphere and wear a nice grey tank top and cargo pants like Sigourney Weaver. Who doesn’t want that? Plus, there’d be no YouTube so even if there weren’t any limpet experiments or ray machines to fix that day I wouldn’t waste hours watching vile 50 Shades of Grey trailers like I usually do when I’m bored shitless at work. I could catch up on my reading, or watch the icy twin moons limn our fulvous lost horizon. Or knit my ill-conceived alienates fancy balaclavas for when the sight of themselves gets too much.
I’m extra vexed because I didn’t make the cut on the reality show they’re shooting down at Koh Rong either. This time because I’m past the use by date for anything useful, reality show-wise. Can’t run fast enough, can’t bear children in case we need to perpetuate the species, can’t wear a bathing suit without mesh tummy control. Fantastic. Too old to be filmed gagging on worms and storming off in a dudgeon from a bunch of easy-tanning, turquoise-toe-ring-wearing French people, and too handsome for a death ride in space with four brave, minging loons bound for terminal glory.
Still, Mum would say I’m not a total loser. Maybe I’ve got a kind face or something, because every homeless person in CharmingVille has popped a box on the ground and is sleeping in my doorway. Perhaps the five-ohs down on 108 were bored inbetween guarding the tumbleweeds in Freedom Park and filing their pinky nails into nasal specula and decided on a rout. Perhaps for street people, like everyone else, a change is as good as a holiday. However they ended up down my neck of the ‘hood I don’t have the heart to move them, especially since the lady who sleeps on top of a giant Hello Kitty sweeps my front porch every morning. There’s also that woman with the water bottle collection and the yellow umbrella-spired cart: the one with the ingenious hammocky concoction up front and that poor little cat on a string. She gives me a toothless grin every morning and it’s like looking in the mirror. How can I send her away?
She’s not the only one doing her bit for us earthbound castoffs. On one of these confusingly multitudinous Chinese New Year’s days I was throwing down a black sesame ice cream and sneering at smokers from my customary riverside nook when I noticed a clade of do-gooding trustafarians in elephant pants, rainbow dreadlocks and surgical gloves picking up rubbish off the boardwalk greenbelt. They didn’t seem like Christians, although God-botherers are cannier these days and do quite well blending in with normal people until BANG, you’re having a Kool-Aid down the Youth Centre with some smiling guitarists. That’s another story. Anyway. Perhaps, they’d been kicked off the island when a dolly mix of assorted goons put the kibosh on that sorry Kazantip jamboree. Perhaps, they were space cadets. Or just innocents abroad. Either way, I gave them a fairy clap. Mars. Venus. Kaliningrad. Whatever planet we’re on, we’re all stars.